I ^"J first on the mountain top 



seldom wanders down into his cousin's country. This, 

 then, is the upper Sonoran zone at its most typical, and it 

 continues upward for two thousand feet or more. Only to- 

 ward its upper limit is snow likely to lie even a few days 

 at a time in winter. 



Now junipers are scattered more frequently among the 

 oaks and then, almost before we can be aware what has 

 happened, we have plunged into the pine forests of the 

 transition zone. Temperature is partly responsible for the 

 change but rainfall is perhaps more important. At sixty- 

 five hundred feet some twenty inches, nearly twice what 

 the desert gets, may fall and, what is almost equally im- 

 portant, a considerable portion of it may fall as snow to 

 cover the ground for weeks at a time and to soak slowly 

 in as it melts. The Arizona pine — barely distinguishable 

 from the better-knovra. ponder os a yellow pine — may lift its 

 head a hundred feet, casting a deep shade upon the 

 needle-carpeted floor precisely as the evergreen forests do 

 in northern regions. And near the upper limit of this zone 

 there are many firs. The abert squirrel, one of the largest 

 and handsomest of its tribe, pricks up pointed ears and 

 flourishes the extravagant panache of grayish tail as it 

 searches for edible cones. Large flocks of the steel blue 

 Arizona jays sail screaming from tree to tree. And quietly 

 among the branches the little pigmy nuthatch goes about 

 its business as much at home as it is in the evergreen 

 forests of the state of Washington. 



Here is nothing to remind one of the sunny desert not 

 half an hour away by car. Not a plant or an animal would 

 know how to live in the desert. Most do not even know 

 that the desert exists. The wanderins; animal has alwavs 

 turned back at the edge of his familiar environment. Seeds 



